Less May Be More for Cannes Buyers

Going into this year's Cannes, the consensus is that, rather than too many projects, there may well be too few despite the flurry of down-to-the-wire high-profile announcements on the eve of the festival.

But less product has its upsides.

"What we have is a less-cluttered marketplace with better-quality movies on the whole and that is healthy," IM Global's Stuart Ford said.

Voltage Pictures topper Nicolas Chartier agreed. "Less product than usual, less competition, so if you have real movies with cast/director and start date, it's great," he said.

But flurry or no flurry, many bizzers concluded that the 2014 Cannes trading looks to be anemic compared to 2013. Last year, buyers were overwhelmed by high-profile cast movie projects, very often U.S., very often only semi-packaged. Many never got made.

"One of the things that's been building for about a year now, but that is now really coming into focus for people, is that there is a genuine lack of content coming onto the markets," FilmNation's Glen Basner said.

Imagem's Ivan Boeing said in 2013, some projects materialized at the last moment, while others were not fully packaged. But this year, "Cannes looks set to be smaller with business focused on 10, maximum 20 bigger projects."

For mainstream buyers, a clutch of must-check-out titles are indeed coming into focus.